Page:A critical and exegetical commentary on Genesis (1910).djvu/187

 reach. The connexion of the closing words is rather with 2$7$: man was taken from the ground, and in the natural course will return to it again.—and to dust, etc.] Cf. Jb. 10$9$ 34$15$, Ps. 90$3$ 146$4$, Ec. 3$20$ 12$7$ etc.:.

The arrangement of the clauses in $17-19$ is not very natural, and the repeated variations of the same idea have suggested the hypothesis of textual corruption or fusion of sources. In Jub. iii. 25 the passage is quoted in an abridged form, the line 'Cursed sake' being immediately followed by 'Thorns to thee,' and $18b$, being omitted. This is, of course, a much smoother reading, and leaves out nothing essential; but $17b$ is guaranteed by 5$29$. Ho. rejects $18b$, and to avoid the repetition of proposes  instead of  in $17$. Gu. is satisfied with v.$17f.$ as they stand, but assigns $19a$α (to ) and $19b$ to another source (J$j$), as doublets respectively of $17b$β and $19a$β. This is perhaps on the whole the most satisfactory analysis.—The poetic structure of the vv., which might be expected to clear up a question of this kind, is too obscure to afford any guidance. Sievers, e.g. (II. 10 f.) finds nothing, except in v.$19$, to distinguish the rhythm from that of the narrative in which it is embedded, and all attempts at strophic arrangement are only tentative.

20-24. The expulsion from Eden.—20. The naming of the woman can hardly have come in between the sentence and its execution, or before there was any experience of motherhood to suggest it. The attempts to connect the notice with the mention of child-bearing in $15f.$ (De. al.), or

20. ] G [] (in 4$1$), Aq. , V Heva, Jer. Eva (Eng. Eve); in this v. G translates, Σ. . The similarity of the name to the Aram. word for 'serpent' (,, Syr. , Syro-Pal. [Mt. 7$10$]); cf. Ar. ḥayyat from ḥauyat [Nö.]) has always been noticed, and is accepted by several modern scholars as a real etymological equivalence (Nö. ZDMG, xlii. 487; Sta. GVI, i. 633; We. Heid. 154). The ancient idea was that Eve was so named because she had done the serpent's work in tempting Adam (''Ber. R.; Philo, De agr. Noe'', 21; Clem. Alex. Protrept. ii. 12. 1). Quite recently the philological equation has acquired fresh significance from the discovery of the name on a leaden Punic tabella devotionis (described by Lidz. Ephemeris, i. 26 ff.; see Cooke, NSI, 135), of which the first line reads: "O Lady ḤVT, goddess, queen!" Lidz. sees in this mythological personage a goddess of the under-world, and as such a serpent-deity; and identifies her with the biblical Ḥavvah. Ḥavvah would thus be a 'depotentiated' deity, whose prototype was a Phœnician goddess of the Under-world, worshipped in the form of a serpent, and bearing the